Death Comes for the Archbishop, opening manuscript leaf.
Opening Leaf Of Her Masterwork
Only Known Cather Manuscript
Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Manuscript Leaf. Ca. 1927.
Single leaf, 8 ½ x 11 inches; black fountain ink, recto only; pin holes to upper left corner; several creases where folded. Matted and framed, 15 x 18 inches.
As far as we are able to trace, this is the sole survival of any round of manuscript of Cather’s masterpiece, Death Comes for the Archbishop (Knopf, 1927).
Cather manuscripts, quite simply, do not exist. She commanded that at her death all letters and manuscripts be destroyed, and her executors seem to have honored her edict more aggressively than one would have hoped. Correspondence does turn up with some regularity in institutional collections. The working manuscript for her last novel, Sapphira the Slave Girl, is at Drew University in New Jersey. A single short manuscript appears in the catalogue of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and a short typescript, at Princeton University. There are no manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. There are none in the Library of Congress.
A spectacular relic.
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Prologue - - At Rome.
the 1848,
One summer evening in ^ last year ^
of the Eighteen-forties, three Car-
dinals and a missionary Bishop
from America were dining to-
the garden [published as “gardens”] of a villa in
gether in ^ the Sabine hills, over-
looking Rome. The Villa was famous
for the fine view from its terrace.
four men sat at
The hidden garden in which the ^
table was set lay some twenty
feet below the south end of this
terrace, and was a mere shelf of
rock, overhanging a steep de-
clivity planted with vineyards.
stone
A flight of ^ steps connected it
(#9408)
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